Editing Grammatical gender (section)

== Gender across languages ==
{{Cleanup lang|section|date=May 2022}}

Related languages need not assign the same gender to a noun: this shows that gender can vary across related languages. Conversely, unrelated languages that are in contact can impact how a borrowed noun is assigned gender, with either the borrowing or the donor language determining the gender of the borrowed word.

=== Gender can vary across related languages ===
Nouns which have the same meanings in different languages need not have the same gender. This is particularly so in the case of things with no natural gender, such as sexless objects. For example, there is, by all appearances, nothing about a table that should cause it to be associated with any particular gender, and different languages' words for "table" are found to have various genders: feminine, as with the French {{lang|fr|table}}; masculine, as with German {{lang|de|Tisch}}; or neuter, as with [[Norwegian language|Norwegian]] {{lang|no|bord}}. (Even within a given language, nouns that denote the same concept may differ in gender—for example, of three German words for "car", {{lang|de|Wagen}} is masculine whereas {{lang|de|Auto}} is neuter, and {{lang|de|Karre}} is feminine.)

[[Cognate]] nouns in closely related languages are likely to have the same gender, because they tend to inherit the gender of the original word in the parent language. For instance, in the [[Romance languages]], the words for "sun" are masculine, being derived from the Latin masculine noun {{lang|la|sol}}, whereas the words for "moon" are feminine, being derived from the Latin feminine {{lang|la|luna}}. (This contrasts with the genders found in German, where {{lang|de|Sonne}} "sun" is feminine, and {{lang|de|Mond}} "moon" is masculine, as well as in other [[Germanic languages]].) However, there are exceptions to this principle. For instance, {{lang|it|latte}} ("milk") is masculine in Italian (as are French {{lang|fr|lait}} and Portuguese {{lang|pt|leite}}), whereas Spanish {{lang|es|leche}} is feminine and Romanian {{lang|ro|lapte}} is neuter. Likewise, the word for "boat" is neuter in German ({{lang|de|das Boot}}), but common gender in Swedish ({{lang|sv|en båt}}).

Some more examples of the above phenomena are given below. (These come mostly from the Slavic languages, where gender largely correlates with the noun ending.)
* The Russian word {{lang|ru|луна}} ("moon") is feminine, whereas {{lang|ru|месяц}} ("[[Lunar phase|crescent moon]]", also meaning "month") is masculine. In Polish, another Slavic language, the word for moon is {{lang|pl|księżyc}}, which is masculine.
* Russian also has two words for "potato": {{lang|ru|картофель}} which is masculine, and {{lang|ru|картошка}} which is feminine.
* In Polish the loanword {{lang|pl|tramwaj}} ("tram") is masculine, whereas the cognate loanword in Czech, {{lang|cs|tramvaj}}, is feminine.
* The Polish word {{lang|pl|tysiąc}} ("thousand") is masculine, whereas the cognate in Russian, {{lang|ru|тысяча}}, is feminine, while the [[Icelandic language|Icelandic]] cognate {{lang|is|þúsund}} is neuter.
* The Spanish word {{lang|es|origen}} ("origin") is masculine, but its close relatives {{lang|pt|origem}} (from Portuguese), {{lang|gl|orixe}} (from Asturian) and {{lang|gl|origem/ orixe}} from Galician are feminine.
* The French word {{lang|fr|équipe}} ("team") is feminine, while the Spanish word {{lang|es|equipo}} is masculine. The Spanish form contrasts with the Portuguese {{lang|pt|equipa}}/{{lang|pt|equipe}}, both of which are feminine.
* The Italian word {{lang|it|scimmia}} ("ape") is feminine, whereas the Spanish word {{lang|es|simio}} is masculine.
* The French word {{lang|fr|mer}} is feminine, but the Spanish cognate {{lang|es|mar}} is generally masculine (except in some poetic contexts and among sea workers<ref name="mar">{{cite book |title=Diccionario panhispánico de dudas |date=2005 |publisher=Real Academia Española |url= https://www.rae.es/dpd/mar |access-date=25 May 2021 |language=es |chapter=mar}}</ref>), whereas the Catalan cognate {{lang|ca|mar}} can be masculine or feminine, depending on the dialect. All these words mean "sea" and are descended from the Latin {{lang|la|mare}}, which was neuter.

=== How languages assign gender to borrowed words ===
Borrowed words are assigned gender in one of two ways:
* via criteria determined by the borrowing language;
* via criteria determined by the donor language.

==== Borrowing language can determine gender ====
Ibrahim identifies several processes by which a language assigns a gender to a newly borrowed word; these processes follow patterns by which even children, through their subconscious recognition of patterns, can often correctly predict a noun's gender.{{sfn|Ibrahim|1973|p=61}}
# If the noun is animate, natural gender tends to dictate grammatical gender.
# The borrowed word tends to take the gender of the native word it replaces. According to [[Ghil'ad Zuckermann]], morphemic adaptations of English words into American Italian or British Italian are abundant with such cases. For example, the feminine gender of the British Italian word {{lang|it|bagga}} "bag" was induced by the feminine gender of the Italian word {{lang|it|borsa}} "bag".<ref name="Revivalistics">{{cite book |last=Zuckermann |first=Ghil'ad |author-link=Ghil'ad Zuckermann |title=Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |date=2020 |isbn=9780199812790 |url= https://global.oup.com/academic/product/revivalistics-9780199812790?lang=en&cc=us}}</ref>{{rp|86}}
# If the borrowed word happens to have a suffix that the borrowing language uses as a gender marker, the suffix tends to dictate gender.
# If the borrowed word rhymes with one or more native words, the latter tend to dictate gender.
# The default assignment is the borrowing language's unmarked gender.
# Rarely, the word retains the gender it had in the donor language. This tends to happen more frequently in more formal language such as scientific terms, where some knowledge of the donor language can be expected.

Sometimes the gender of a word switches with time. For example, the Russian modern loanword {{lang|ru|виски}} ({{lang|ru-latn|viski}}) "whisky" was originally feminine,<ref>In a translation of [[Jack London]] stories, 1915</ref> then masculine,<ref>In a song of [[Alexander Vertinsky]], 1920s or 1930s</ref> and today it has become neuter.

==== Donor language can determine gender ====
[[Ghil'ad Zuckermann]] argues that the cross-lingual retention of grammatical gender can change not only the lexis of the target language but also its morphology. For example, gender can indirectly influence the productivity of noun-patterns in what he calls the "[[Modern Hebrew|Israeli]]" language: the Israeli neologism {{lang|he|מברשת}} ({{transliteration|he|mivréshet}}, {{Translation|brush}}) is fitted into the ''feminine'' noun-pattern ''mi⌂⌂é⌂et'' (each ⌂ represents a slot where a radical is inserted) because of the feminine gender of the matched words for "brush" such as Arabic {{transliteration|ar|mábrasha}}, Yiddish {{lang|yi|barsht}}, Russian {{transliteration|ru|shchëtka}}, Polish {{lang|pl|kiść}} ({{Translation|painting brush}}) and {{lang|pl|szczotka}}, German {{lang|de|Bürste}} and French {{lang|fr|brosse}}, all feminine.<ref name="Revivalistics" />{{rp|86}}

Similarly, argues Zuckermann, the Israeli neologism for "library", {{lang|he|ספריה}} ({{transliteration|he|sifriá}}), matches the feminine gender of the parallel pre-existent European words: Yiddish {{Translation|yi|biblioték}}, Russian {{transliteration|ru|bibliotéka}}, Polish {{lang|pl|biblioteka}}, German {{lang|de|Bibliothek}} and French {{lang|fr|bibliothèque}}, as well as of the pre-existent Arabic word for "library": {{lang|ar|مكتبة}} ({{transliteration|ar|máktaba}}, also feminine. The result of this neologism might have been, more generally, the strengthening of Israeli {{lang|he|יה-}} ({{transliteration|he|-iá}}) as a productive feminine locative suffix (combined with the influence of Polish {{lang|pl|-ja}} and Russian {{lang|ru|-ия}} ({{transliteration|ru|-iya}})).<ref name="Revivalistics" />{{rp|86–87}}